Fear Eternity
by Deus Arcanum
Summary: Told from the perspective of one of the pilgrims on the ship, the man experiences the many hardships of their journey and finds himself surrounded by sickness and death. He even witnesses Kurtz's death, and finds himself disturbed by his last words.


Fear Eternity

Marlow and the manager discussed the possibility of attack in confidential tones. Standing at the helm, searching the undulating waves of fog for signs of relent, I suspected that any creatures living beneath this stifling blanket of fog would easily navigate it with their crude vessels, or launch an attack from the rainforest of the shore.

The head of a sand bank shoved through the waters some time after we escaped the fog and regained our sight, effectively splitting the river. Marlow communicated the desire to travel through the western passage, in the direction of the station, to the right of which rose a steep bank, heavily overgrown, and to the left a long uninterrupted shoal.

The passage was narrower than we had supposed, and, as it was well into the afternoon, the forest was engulfed in steamy shadows, as if we had stumbled into the maw of a monstrous beast. Marlow spent his days and nights sulking in the cabin with the shutters flung open, while the pilgrims were no where to be seen, as if they had vanished. With only the forest for company I made use of myself by trailing a fishing net in our wake in the hopes of snaring fish or turtles.

The blacks at work on the ship suddenly tensed at their stations, as if answering to some primal instinct. My own body rippled with dread, for surely Death hovered above me, poised to shove me from the precipice of life. I pulled the net back, and was untangling the delicacy of a river rodent when the blacks suddenly began to drop, sitting or laying down abruptly as if napping. My earlier suspicions of attack were confirmed by miniscule sticks whirring through the air like deadly wasps. They struck the helm of the ship and passed inches from my face, and where they struck flesh men fell.

I dropped my net and made my way to the pilot house, where Marlow struggled with the helmsman, who had thrown open a shutter and now shook a rifle at the bush-monkeys of the shore. The swarm had abated, and I paused when I nearly tripped over a corpse. The poleman still cling to his pole, as if it was a shaman's stick and could revive him. I considered closing the lids over his wide white eyes, so startling in his dark, gaunt face, eyes frozen in an expression of agony. He was, after all, a man like I, and was stolen by Death to suffer for eternity. Perhaps he had even taken an arrow meant to pierce my hide.

There was a shout from the pilot-house, and I abandoned the corpse, bounding into a scene almost comical in its absurdity. Marlow stood beside the pilgrim in pink pyjamas, their faces matching masks of disgust and pity. The black man they gazed upon lay in a pool of his own blood, the shaft of a spear protruding from his own torso. The man turned his lustrous eyes on me, glaring as if he found his demise of my doing.

When those eyes at last grew glassy, Marlow ordered the pink pyjama pilgrim to steer and smoked tobacco while discussing with the others, who had made appearances, the infamous Kurtz. I stood at the window to gulp cool air, for the pilgrim was making a mess of the steering, and gathered from their talk that the man at the station had either died and made a good meal for wildlife or gone stark raving mad. The branches clawing at our craft seemed to me as demons searching for our souls. It would not surprise me that Kurtz, alone in the wilderness, would look for his soul one day only to learn that he had lost it.

I had forced the pink pyjama pilgrim to relinquish control of the wheel and stood at it myself, steering smoothly. The manager clapped his hands like a young child when we approached a hill naked of undergrowth. "The station!" he cried.

Marlow examined the area through his glasses, describing the decrepit manner of the land. I myself could not tear my eyes from the harlequin that shouted at us from the shore. He was a young man, gangly and pug-nosed with small round eyes and patches infesting his clothing.

I gathered with the pilgrims in the ruse of cleaning the corpses from the ship, instead listening to Marlows conversation with the strange fellow. The harlequin spoke quickly, his voice rising and falling, as if one moment he was singing for joy and the next prepared to weep. The little Russian did not speak a single coherent word until handed a pipe to calm him. He spoke strangely of himself and the natives, repeating "simple men" quite often, as if they were a pack of dogs and Kurtz was the master.

I could listen no more, and threw myself into my work for the time we were on the island. I saw little of Marlow and nothing of the infamous Kurtz, though encountered many strange natives and one beautiful woman, dressed richly and striding about as if she owned the land.

When Marlow ordered me to his side in the odd hour of night to assist him, dread left me speechless. I assisted Marlow in carrying Kurtz away from the devil's work, and sit at his bedside for days while the man mumbled nonsense and started at shadows. I was unsure what to think of Kurtz, the man that had dominated the land, the river, the natives, and one little Russian man. Did he deserve to be idolized, or to be thrown into the dust as all idols eventually were? I could feel Death leaning over this man's shoulders, and knew he would succeed. Eyes wide, Kurtz murmured a cry, "The horror! The horror!"


End file.
